To walk the fabled grounds of Inverness Club is to step back in time, following in the spiked steps of Snead and Sarazen, Jones and Hogan, Arnie and Jack.
It is to conjure the towering ghosts of history.
And yet the beauty of Inverness is that it isn’t just a museum piece. It’s that the six-time major host continues to live and breathe, grander than ever as it awaits its latest international close-up.
When the all-star teams of American and European golfers square off here at the Solheim Cup, they’ll have the most precious of opportunities — the chance to add one of the greatest moments at one of our nation’s greatest sporting venues.
“It's a treat to play this golf course. I mean, it's unbelievable,” U.S. assistant captain Stacy Lewis said Wednesday. “We're in the men's locker room and you see all the history and the pictures of the guys. It's going to be nice to have them put some pictures up of some females, too."
Now, all that’s left is to wonder what kind of story the pictures will tell — and where the tale that unfolds this weekend will fit into the Dorr Street club’s pantheon.
In the meantime, let’s sift through the archives and review the competition. Here’s one man’s ranking of the top 10 moments in Inverness history:
■ 1. Tway’s sand magic: Think of the greatest home-stretch shots in major championship history.
Sarazen’s double eagle at the 1935 Masters. Watson’s chip-in at the ’82 U.S. Open. Mize’s Miracle at Augusta in ’87.
Well, in the same breath belongs Bob Tway’s final shot of the 1986 PGA Championship at Inverness.
After rallying from a four-shot deficit on the back nine to tie Greg Norman, Tway appeared in trouble on 18 when he hit his approach into a bunker right of the green. But you know what happened next.
The impossible did. With 15,000 fans crammed in close, a roar shook the grounds as Tway holed the shot for the win, then leaped up and down in the sand like a little boy on Christmas morning — a scene that will live on in golf montages until the end of time.
“Right now, I’m the happiest person in the world,” he said afterward, fighting back tears.
Truly, a moment for the ages.
■ 2. Never-ending playoff: Long before there was the Glass City Marathon, there was the 1931 U.S. Open.
In the first Open to be broadcast to the nation, radio listeners were treated to the longest playoff in the history of American golf.
Billy Burke and George Von Elm were tied after 72 holes, then again after a 36-hole playoff the next day. Finally, after another 36 holes and 144 overall, Burke won with 589 strokes to Von Elm’s 590, persevering in part thanks to a strict regimen of stogies — he smoked 32 cigars during the tournament — and suds.
Turns out, his late nights at the Secor Hotel — which served as the downtown media headquarters — helped him keep his weight up during the scorching July week. While Von Elm lost 15 pounds, Burke gained three.
What could he say? “I like beer,” Burke explained to The Blade, “and I never knew I had so many members of the press who shared that particular like.”
■ 3. The doors open: The 1920 U.S. Open is notable for many reasons, including the Open debuts of a couple 18-year-olds named Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen and a late collapse by the legendary Harry Vardon.
In a sequence that Twitter surely would have taken in total stride, the 50-year-old Vardon led by five shots with five holes to play, then closed with three straight three-putts and a double bogey on 17 to hand the championship to Ted Ray.
But, most of all, the tournament will be remembered for the hospitality of the Inverness membership.
Before the ’20 Open, golf pros were seen as beneath the gilded clubs that hosted their tournaments and not allowed even into the locker rooms. That changed at Inverness, where the club swung open its clubhouse doors to the players.
As a show of appreciation, Walter Hagen took up a collection among his fellow pros to present the club with a magnificent cathedral clock. It ticks to this day in the clubhouse foyer.
■ 4. Lord Byron arrives: Think if a club today hired Phil Mickelson over Rory McIlroy as its head pro.
It would be almost as impressive as what happened at Inverness in 1939, when, after interviewing the two finalists for its vacant teaching position, the club tabbed Byron Nelson over Ben Hogan.
Imagine that.
Nelson, of course, was the club pro from 1939 to 1944, a stretch during which he won three of his five majors. Coincidence? The affable Texan didn’t think so, calling his day job at Inverness the perfect training ground.
“I would go out and play a threesome or foursome of very fine Inverness players and I’d play against their best ball,” he said years later. “We wouldn’t play for much, maybe a dollar, and I had to shoot 66 or 67 to break even. Then I’d go to the PGA Championship and play a match against one man and it would seem pretty simple.”
Nelson continued to call Inverness his home course until his death in 2006.
■ 5. Delirium and despair: How much joy can fill a golfing heart? How much agony?
Fans here witnessed both extremes at the 1993 PGA Championship, when, at long last, Paul Azinger became a major champion, outlasting none other than Norman on the second playoff hole.
For The Shark, you couldn’t have written a more aching script. Seven years after he was felled by Tway’s bunker miracle, the star-crossed Norman twice came to the same 18th green — on the final hole of regulation and the first extra one — with 18-foot putts to win the tourney. He struck them perfectly. One ball even went in and made a 270-degree loop. Both lipped out.
“Just Norman’s luck,” Rick Reilly wrote in Sports Illustrated, “he had found the only golf ball in the world afraid of the dark.”
Norman became the second player ever to lose playoffs in all four majors — an unfortunate distinction Reilly labeled the “Grand Slammed.”
■ 6. A tree grows overnight: With respect to Hale Irwin — a worthy champion — the 1979 U.S. Open is best recalled for the dearly departed Hinkle Tree, which was called home to arboreal heaven last year.
Many readers will recall the story.
Flash back to the No. 8 tee during the first round. While the hole — a par-5, 528-yard severe dogleg left — was designed as a classic three-shot setup, a long-bombing journeyman named Lon Hinkle had other ideas. As he waited to hit, Hinkle noticed a shortcut that would shave off 75 yards and, to hell with it, took it. He melted a one-iron through a gap in the trees on to the adjacent 17th fairway, then hit a two-iron to the green and two-putted for birdie.
Hinkle was delighted. The USGA? Not so much.
By the next morning, a 20-foot Black Hills spruce had magically sprouted to close the opening. “Gee, the trees sure grow fast around here,” Norman quipped.
Fans hoping to pay their respects this week can do so by the eighth tee, where a plaque commemorates the famed conifer. Inverness remains the only course in major championship history that was altered after the start of play.
■ 7. A golden debut: There’s no way around it: Inverness’ roster of major champions isn’t as star-splashed as you would expect.
In an alternate universe, its winners could have just as easily included Hagen, Jones, Sarazen, Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Tom Watson, all of whom were at the height of their powers for at least one championship here. As it is, four of its six champions won their lone major in Toledo. (Irwin, a three-time major winner, and Ray, a two-time winner, are the exceptions.)
Yet none of that diminishes the patchwork of moments that made Inverness, and the 1957 U.S. Open is no exception.
In retrospect, the tournament — bookended by the withdrawal of the favored Hogan and a win for the longshot Dick Mayer — stands out as the Open debut of a certain precocious Ohio teen.
“I played with Freddie Wampler and Tommy Jacobs, and I was 17 years old,” Jack Nicklaus recalled a few years ago. “I hit a 3-wood and a 7-iron on the green 35 feet and holed it for a birdie. Parred the second hole, parred the third hole, which was the little par-3, and then my name went up on the board. I managed to make double bogey on the fourth hole, the long par-4 and was never to be seen again.”
Nicklaus shot consecutive 80s and missed the cut.
P.S. You might say the kid had better days ahead, though not always at Inverness, a course Nicklaus respected more than he loved. Asked after the 2003 Senior Open here if he wanted one more crack at his Toledo nemesis — where he never finished higher than ninth — the GOAT replied, “No, I’ve had enough cracks at this golf course.”
■ 8. Hogan thrills: If Hogan was disappointed he didn’t get the job at Inverness, he never let on.
Instead, he became a big part of the club’s history just the same, electrifying the galleries who poured out each summer for the Inverness Invitational Four-Ball, a seven-round team event that was one of the marquee tournaments on the PGA Tour from 1935 to 1952.
Teamed with Jimmy Demaret, a bon vivant who was as different from the stoic Hogan off the course as he was the perfect partner on it, the big-hitting duo was unstoppable. Hogan and Demaret won four championships at Inverness, the last of which came in 1948.
■ 9. Gathering of legends: With world No. 1 Nelly Korda leading the way, the Solheim Cup will feature no shortage of billboard names.
But, incredibly, it may be only the second greatest collection of women’s golfers that has ever assembled on Dorr Street.
The greatest? That distinction belongs to the 1954 Inverness Invitational, which had enough talent to fill a wing of the Hall of Fame. In fact, of the 20 players that participated in the one-off team tournament, eight are in the World Golf Hall: Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Mickey Wright, Patty Berg, Betsy Rawls, Louise Suggs, Betty Jameson, Marilynn Smith, and Marlene Bauer.
It just might be the most star-dense field in golf history.
■ 10. Amateur glory: Craig Stadler didn’t just win the oldest American golf championship when he captured the 1973 U.S. Amateur at Inverness. He set the table to join one of one of the most exclusive clubs in the sport.
With his win at the 1982 Masters, Stadler — affectionately known as the Walrus for his droopy mustache and ample waistline — became just the third player to win both the Amateur and a green jacket. He is now one of six, along with Arnold Palmer (1954 Amateur), Nicklaus (1959, ’61), Mark O’Meara (1979), Phil Mickelson (1990), and Tiger Woods (1994-96).
First Published September 1, 2021, 9:26 p.m.